Saturday, 12 April 2014

Bruce and his code for Tirupathi

Who has not heard of Robert
Bruce, the hero of Scotland.
Born Robert I (1274-1329), he is more widely known as Robert the Bruce,
the King of Scotand, from 1306 to 1329. He fought successfully during his reign
to regain Scotland’s place
as an independent nation, and is today remembered in Scotland as a national hero. However,
there is one more Bruce and he is closely connected to the East India Company and
British India. A British civil officer, this
Bruce had a hand in drafting the first set of administrative rules for the Srinivasa
or VenkataramanaTemple in Tirumala. Unfortunately, he
remains relatively unknown and even today mention Bruce and the majority of
people link him to the heroic Scot King.

The Indian Bruce, as we will
call him here, formulated a set of rules which came to be known as Bruce's Code. This code, which operated for several
years, is a set of rules for the management and administration of temples
of Tirumala and Tirupathi and it was enacted by the East India Company
way back in 1821.

Bruce was the District
Commissioner of Chitooor under which Tirupathi-Tirumala came. He drafted a set
of 42 rules to ease the administration
of temples. These rules were drawn from the existing customs and traditions practiced
in the temple and they did not interfere
in the day-to-day affairs of the temples.

The British found themselves
the masters of South
India after they killed Tipu Sultan in the fourth and final
Anglo-Mysore War of 1799. Except for the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Marathas,
there was no other major power in south India. The British found themselves ruling over a
fairly large part of south India,
including the province
of Tirumala-Tirupathi.

The vast wealth of the temple
and its huge income was a major attraction to the East India Company. The company
decided to take over the management of the temple and Bruce, the then district
commissioner, framed the rules. The main objective of the Bruce Code, as it
came to be called, was to generate fixed revenue to the company and also
to prevent misappropriation and mismanagement of temple funds. The rules or the
Bruce Code were in force till 1842-1843 when Queen Victoria
of England
stripped the company of all powers to administer Hindu temples.

The SrinivasaTemple,
till then, had been generously endowed with and funded by scores of Hindu
Kingdoms, including the Pallavas, Cholas, Hoysalas and Vijayanagars. After the
Vijayanagar Empire disappeared in the mid 17th century (1665), the
area of Thondaimandalam came under Muslim rulers including Golconda. When the Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb,
extinguished Golconda
in 1687, Tirupathi-Tirumala came under the Mughals. It was in 1710 that
Thondaimandalama became a separate Kingdom and Sadatullah Khan became its first
Nawab. In 1748, the Nawab of Arcot first assigned the revenue of the Tirupathi
temple to the East India Company. In 1782, Hyder Ali of Mysore, captured the region but he did not
interfere with the administration of the temple. In 1801, the East India Company
took over the administration of the temple from the Nawab of Arcot.

In 1803, Bruce, the then
Collector of Chitoor, sent a report to the board of revenues of the East
India Company showing the full account of the institution, along with details
of pujas, expenses, and extent of lands. This report was known as Statton’s
Report on the Tirupati Pagoda. These reports formed the basis on which the company
controlled the temple till 1821. The report was accepted and the code was
prepared on July 25, 1821 and it was in force for a little over two decades.

The Bruce Code makes for
fascinating reading. It states that food offering were made to the deity six
times a day. To pay for this, erstwhile rules had donated the revenues of 432 villages
surrounding Tirupathi to the temple. When the temple came under the Sultans,
the Nawab of Arcot and finally the Company, the offerings were reduced to three
times a day-morning, noon and night.

Between 1805-16, there were many
instances and complaints about misappropriation and mismanagement of
temple funds and when they were brought to the notice of board, the East India
Company passed Regulation VII of 1817 to check such buses. Through the
regulation provided only superintendence and not management, the board interfered
in almost all aspects of the administration.

Such interference in the
Tirupathi temple continued till the Court of Directors in England strongly
resented the participation of the Company in idolatry and ordered its
relinquishment of their administration of religious endowments. This order was
signed by Queen Victoria
in 1842-43 when the administration of the temple was transferred to the Hathiramji
Mutt, Tirupati. It was only in 1932 that the TTD was formed to administer the temple.

Don't forget Sir Thomas Munro, who, as Governor of the Ceded Districts, registered the property rights of Tirupathi Venkataramana and his holdings such that even the post-1947 crooks ahve found it difficult to plunder as freely as they have other heritage temples. To this day, the first Parasadam at Tirupathi is known as "Munro Sadham"

Yes, Mr. Aiyer, you are absolutely right. Though the shrine has riches, many remain untraced and this is what a recent audit has revealed. Jewels, gold, silver and ornaments donated to the temple by the Vijayanagar Emperor, Krishna Deva Raya, and others are missing.

Allopathy or the modern system of medicine labels it calls it degenerative and often fatal disorder. It says there is no known effective ...

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